| A
few snowflakes were falling, but there was no danger
of a storm. The clouds were thin, but sufficiently strong
to hold the sun, so there was no glare from the ice.
The wind was altogether dead or rose softly now and
then with almost a warm stroke in it, blowing loose
snow and little particles of ice and wisps of straw
across the smooth surface. Fifteen miles away a farm
house stood on a bluff overlooking the canal, and we
knew good cheer was there, and a Canadian welcome and
clear ice every stroke of the way. Or the clear ice
was only a rumor; it might be open or shaly or porous,
or we might have to walk around the rapids of the river
or—a hundred other things that those bent on staying
at home fling in the path of one determined to go abroad.
When the ice holds, a man is almost sure to find good
skating if he will look for it; so we started. Out of
the city, where the barges are frozen in, the cheery
smoke yet pouring from their red-curtained cabins; where
gangs of boys are playing confused games of shinny,
where a youth will stand a whole hour to get one whack
at a rubber ball, but what a whack! and how he glories
in it for two days after, breaking every conversation
with a—"but did you see the swipe I gave
it"! Then under the bridges, where the cinders
from the engines hold you back for a second or two;
then down the bends, where you meet solitary skaters
speeding away, or whole parties circling slowly about;
then through the cut where every breathless urchin roars
at you that the ice isn't safe above; then a whole stretch
where you meet no one until you reach the first lock.
There you are likely to find a pioneer returning from
the wilderness and bringing good news with him. Hail
fellow-enthusiast! who, with one skate bound on with
straps and the other with a piece of rope, hast ventured,
Columbus-like, into the unknown, led on by thine adventurous
spirit, and with no companion save thy trusty "shinny";
we will take thy laconic advice to "hug the bank
and look out for shales." So we go clumping over
the locks, never waiting to take off our skates, but
rushing at the mile of clear ice, mellow as velvet,
colored like sea water, with the overflow yellow like
cream. Then over another lock and out onto the river.
Close under the bank, dodging the over-hanging trees,
and edging away from the black ice, black as night and
full of little starry bubbles. What a pace our leader
is cutting out! You hear him go crashing into the shale,
and before you well know it you are into the place yourself
and by it. You hear the long, snarling rip when he strikes
the ice frozen from the overflow, and before anyone
can stop every one breaks through and goes hopping along
like mad to keep from falling. And now he has found
the black ice holds, and we go swooping out on it as
if we were flying. Mile after mile. Not a stroke lost;
past huge butternuts straggling on the shore, and whole
groves of maples standing closely together, wrapped
in the pinkish lustre from their own stems, and lonely
pines, set high on the frozen shore. Then the sun sets
and the air grows colder; we feel it on our thighs as
we force them through with the stroke, and it blows
a long, surging wraith of snow with it. The ice gives
a long boom and splits under our feet. The clear lemon-yellow
flares in the west. One star comes out. There are lights
on the shore. Then voices hail us, and, taking off our
skates, we discover how hard it is to walk, and go stumbling
up the bank to the house. We had skated fifteen miles,
and this is what we had for supper:—Baked pike,
stuffed with spices, baked potatoes, home-made bread,
cider-apple sauce, pumpkin pie, sage cheese, currant
loaf and fritters and maple syrup.
S.
Now
and then, when I meet in any of our literary journals
that hysterical shriek, "Have we a literature?"
I turn in my despair to that elaborate compendium, "The
Songs of the Great Dominion," which is regarded
by many as containing the canon of the Canadian Parnassus.
And if I do not emerge therefrom quite as comforted
and refreshed as I ought to be, I do not need to be
asked why, save by those who have not perused the volume.
So far as heroic labor is concerned, Mr. Lighthall deserves
the place he has made for himself as the latest patron
of all persons living in the Dominion who at any time
or other have been ambitious to express themselves in
rhyme, the most important of which, at least judged
from his patriotic standpoint, he has collected into
a volume. No one knows now better than Mr. Lighthall
does, that not more than a dozen of the sixty names
mentioned in his anthology have ever laid serious claim
to real poetical achievement, and that certainly not
more than half that number have any title to lengthy
remembrance even in Canada. The serious objections to
be taken to this work, and they are grave objections,
aside from the utter lack of literary standard observed
in the volume, are that true Canadian literature as
it now exists is neither represented nor even foreshadowed
in its pages, and that Canada is represented as a crude
colony, whose literature, if it could be called by such
a name, is merely associated with superficial canoe
and carnival songs, backwoods and Indian tales told
in poor rhyme, and all tied together by pseudo-patriotic
hurrahs, which are about as representative of our true
nationality as they are of literature. Now, it is far
from my purpose to cast any slur on a Canadian literary
undertaking, and Mr. Lighthall, as a sincere and high-minded
patriot, as a literary man of lofty ideals, commands
our respect and serious consideration, and it is not
in any carping spirit that I approach his work at this
date. But, at the same time, we have a serious question
to consider, if Mr. Lighthall's anthology is to be considered
of any importance at all, and that question is, the
fair representation of our best literature both abroad
and in our own country. As far as Canada is concerned,
Mr. Lighthall's anthology might even at this day be
regarded as obsolete, in the light of the remarkable
strides our literature has taken. But when we remember
that this work is being sold in England and goes into
the hands of cultured English men and women as representative
of our best work and our claim for rank in the literature
of the day, we cannot help but feel that we are being
imposed upon, if such a term is not too hard under the
circumstances. Now wonder that Sir Charles Dilke, on
reading the book, set Canadian literature down as even
inferior to that of Australia, while the truth is that
as far as culture is concerned alone we rank with the
best young writers to-day in the language. If editors
of anthologies only knew that it is no compliment to
an author, and often a serious injury to his prospects,
to be represented by his poorest work, they would be
more serious and unbiassed in their selections. It is
very unfair to a number of authors to judge them all
by the subject matter, as Mr. Lighthall has done. The
writer who has no mere local interest has no prominence
in this book. The result is a false basis for judgment
and a general foreign misunderstanding as to our literature.
To give one instance of the peculiar misrepresentation,
the one writer who is sufficiently accentuated to raise
him from the promiscuous heap is spoken of as "poet
and canoeist," while the fact that he is a professor
in a college is cast altogether into the shade.
C.
How
painfully we take our amusement and how many intolerable
things are done in the name of enjoyment. A room full
of whist players is a spectacle to make a philosopher
weep, and a progressive euchre party will turn the head
of a sensitive man grey in a single night. More misery
can be got out of a common dancing party than from an
hour's outpour of one our popular preachers. How little
genuine enjoyment is afforded by these things even to
the young people who most assiduously cultivate them
is apparent to anyone who will sit composedly for a
few minutes in a quiet corner of some crowded drawing
room and mark the medley of mechanical noises about
him—the unreal laughter and phantastic gibberish
that fill up the intervals of conversation. As a matter
of fact, most of our every-day amusements are merely
the result of a blind and hysterical desire to keep
going, to be on the move and have nothing to do with
heartfelt pleasure at all. Most of the enjoyments that
we really have we find in those unregarded and unsought
for hours which we profess to consider the most tedious
hours of quiet and useful activity, when we are not
thinking in the least of pleasure—hours touched
with the tenderness of friendship or domestic love,
with spirits kindled to a crystal flame by the earnestness
of quiet and undemonstrative converse. These are the
things that feed and succor the soul and redeem the
melancholy of life.
L.
The
failure of Mr. Mansfield's adaptation of "The Scarlet
Letter" in New York shows the utter impossibility
of producing objectively the subjective drama. No one
who has read Hawthorne's greatest story can fail to
see the masterly dramatic power of the book in its subtle
analysis of the processes of a soul in its relations
to one of the most tragic conditions of human life.
And yet, the very act of putting such a work on the
stage has the effect of robbing the drama, for a drama
it is, of all its higher qualities as a life study,
with which Hawthorne has invested it, and to accentuate
for stage effect what is necessarily morbid and even
coarse in such a picture.
C.
Mr.
Swinburne, the heir proper to the laureateship, is beyond
all other poets a lover of the sea. He carries his devotion
almost to the point of madness, for he bathes in all
seasons and all weathers, and is a most daring and persistent
swimmer. There is a newspaper tale that not many years
ago the poet while bathing on the coast of Normandy
got into a dangerous current and was carried far out
to sea. He was observed by a French fishing boat and
picked up when at the very point of drowning. After
he had recovered himself he sat in the bow of the boat
and began chanting verses of Victor Hugo with a tone
and aspect so weird and uncanny that the fishermen fell
to consulting together whether they had not better throw
him overboard again, as he might be the devil. Mr. Swinburne
also makes it a boast that he never carries an umbrella.
An old lady neighbor of his recently averred that there
was something wrong in his 'ead, and it transpired that
the reason for this conjecture was that she had seen
him more than once standing uncovered in the middle
of the road in a rainstorm, his face wearing an expression
of perfect quiescence and placid abstraction.
L.
Tennyson
is said to have expressed a dislike of Venice, and the
reason was that he was unable to get any good, honest
English tobacco there.
L.
In
the December number of The Cosmopolitan are contributions
from two Canadians—a poem entitled "The Yule
Guest" by Bliss Carman and an article on the poetry
and personality of Alfred Tennyson by Dr. George Stewart
of Quebec. Mr. Carman's poem is not by any means up
to his standard, although there are lines and phrases
in it full of the peculiar quality of his best work.
Dr. Stewart's article is very interesting, the more
so as it is written by one who had the rare advantage
and satisfaction of knowing Tennyson personally.
L.
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